Category: Branding

As any public relations professional will tell you, strategy, calculation and precision are ingredients guiding every decision that is made during a communications campaign. SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) goals are set, objectives are established and tactics are identified to show how these goals and objectives will be accomplished throughout the duration of the campaign. A well established communications plan will help guide your efforts throughout the campaign, and a similar plan will also help achieve success using Facebook Live, the social media giant’s live streaming video feature. Facebook Live is now available to all Facebook users, pages and brands, and it’s important for social media coordinators and managers to develop a “Standard Operating Procedure” to help your organization remain consistent, efficient and prepared as you begin using Facebook Live to promote your brand.

The FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute has been exploring Facebook Live and discussing its potential benefits for promoting fish and wildlife research throughout the state of Florida. As the social media coordinator for the institute, I led efforts to create a framework for Facebook Live as it relates to the overall social media strategy for our brand. Over the past two years we’ve implemented more video into our content plan, and live video offers another exciting avenue to engage our audience in unique and interesting ways. To help other organizations that are making the leap into live video, I’ve included our new communication plan specific to Facebook Live. Instead of going in with guns blazing, we’re building a road map to help us effectively use Facebook Live as a vital brand building tool for years to come.

Facebook Live – Communications Plan for the FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute

AboutFacebook Live lets people, public figures and pages share live video with their followers and friends on Facebook. This feature allows fans to connect with a page in real time by commenting, sharing, liking or reacting to a video as it’s being broadcast live. More information about this feature can be found on Facebook’s website: https://live.fb.com/about/

PlanningBefore broadcasting live video on Facebook, a content and filming plan needs to be discussed, reviewed and approved by the section leader, field biologists and partners involved. Below is a list of steps that will be completed prior to a live broadcast:

Identify and discuss reasons for wanting to do a live video and what the pros and cons will be.

Describe what information will be included in the video and set the tone, style and structure of it. It could be a Q&A with a biologist, how-to videos, fish and wildlife workups, wildlife releases or other field/lab work happening in a controlled environment.

Determine what you want the viewer to take away from the live video. Will it be purely informative, or is there a citizen science angle we can take? Is a call to action needed to engage the audience and encourage them to actively participate?

Set objectives for the video and identify goals that will need to be met to accomplish these objectives.

Create a loose timeline for the video. This ensures there is no confusion while the broadcast is live and everyone is on the same page while filming. Have an idea of how long the video will be prior to going live and try to keep it between 5-10 minutes. A plan shows viewers that we are prepared, but it’s okay to improvise and be as professional, helpful and responsive as possible based on what is happening in real time.

Discuss potential problems that may arise during the live broadcast and develop solutions to address these problems.

Develop social media content to promote live video opportunities prior to the broadcast. This could consist of short Facebook text posts, tweets, Instagram content in the hours or days leading up to a scheduled live broadcast. This builds awareness and anticipation for the broadcast and will encourage our audience to watch live at a certain date and time.

Constants – These components will be included in every live video we do

Intro: Biologist(s) will begin the video by stating their name, position, field of study and mention the FWC Fish and Wildlife Research Institute so each live video remains consistent in structure.

At least one biologist will be required to be on camera to discuss the research project and field work being completed that day. The biologist(s) should be present to answer questions from the public and go into further detail about the project if needed. The Q&A portion of the broadcast will be discussed during the planning stage to determine whether we will take live questions.

A short summary of the study to begin the live video will give the viewer a better understanding of the scope of the research, why it’s important and how the fieldwork is being done.

Time and location will be included in the intro to give the viewer a better sense of where and when the live broadcast is taking place. The 5 W’s (Who, What, Where, When, Why) is important to cover in each video because after the live stream ends, a copy of the video is saved to our timeline and can be viewed hours, days, months or years after the live broadcast has ended.

Outro: Sign off each video by thanking the viewers for tuning in. Depending on event, provide info on wildlife alert hotline, call to action, safety tips, etc. Based on time constraints and the availability of the researcher, the broadcast may continue for a short period of time to answer questions from the public during the live stream. Say hello to commenters by name; the audience responds well to their questions being answered live. Encourage viewers to also leave written comments or questions so they can be addressed after the live stream concludes.

Execution

The live broadcast will need to be filmed using a smartphone with IOS or Android operating systems.

From Facebook: “Check the app to make sure that you have a strong signal before going live. WiFi tends to work best, but if you can’t find a nearby network, you’ll want a 4G connection. If you have weak signal, the ‘Go Live’ button will be grayed out.”

One person from the communications office will be using a mobile phone to record the live video. This person can also serve as the “host” or “liason” between the viewers and the researcher(s). Someone in this role may ask the researcher questions, take questions from viewers and help facilitate the broadcast from start to finish. In other cases, the camera person will not need to actively participate in the video and will remain behind the scenes while the researcher(s) is on camera. Filming plans will be determined on a case by case basis.

Briefly run over the filming/content plan with staff prior to broadcast as a refresher.

Film the live broadcast, following the content plan and timeline as a general guide. There will be no script to make these videos as organic and natural as possible.

Ask viewers to subscribe to live notifications at the conclusion of the broadcast. Remind your audience that they can tap on the Follow button on live videos and videos that were live so that they can get notifications the next time we go live.

Evaluation

Discuss live video efforts with communications staff and researchers to try and improve the process for future broadcasts.

Ask for feedback from all parties involved to gain a better idea of what worked well and what needs to be fixed. Our overall strategy with Facebook Live will change and improve as the trial and error phase progresses.

Brainstorm ideas for future videos and determine how often broadcasts should be held.

·Study organizations, companies and partners using live video to keep up with best practices, new features and updates as technology advances. Closely following other pages and their live video efforts allows us to discover new and interesting ways to promote our research using Facebook Live.

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Arby’s made national headlines this week, and it was not for their delicious curly fries. A Pembroke Pines (Florida) restaurant employee refused to serve a police officer at a drive through, and the Pembroke Pines Police Chief did not take kindly to that news. The chief contacted Arby’s corporate executives directly and demanded an apology. Arby’s issued a public statement and apologized for the employee’s actions, but from a public relations perspective that’s like putting a band-aid on a broken window. Arby’s needs a lesson in crisis communications, and from observing the way they handled this situation it’s clear their public relations team was blindsided by this unexpected event. The online community is threatening to boycott their brand, and the company has done very little to assure customers that the issue is being resolved.

This story has spread like wildfire on social media, and from what I’ve observed the company is being more reactive than proactive with their communications efforts. Arby’s hasn’t made a post on their Facebook page since August 29, and at the very least they could have issued a statement on social media explaining the situation, apologizing and offering ways to alleviate the situation. Was the employee fired? What is being done about it? Why should we ever eat at Arby’s again? The company is keeping the public in the dark when they should be acting as transparent and honest as possible. More proactive steps are necessary to educate and inform the public, but instead they’ve allowed the media and their own customer base to dominate the discussions that are happening across social media. Right now Arby’s is more interested in promoting their new “sliders” on all of their social media channels instead of doing some much needed damage control.

Corporations are not invincible. There comes a time when a brand will come under fire when they least expect it, and a crisis communications plan needs to be in place for trying times like this. The power of the web should not be underestimated. In less than 24 hours the entire nation caught wind of this story. A simple interaction between a fast food worker and a police officer is now threatening to tear apart a well-established brand, and the company expects this to just blow over. The internet never forgets, and with how much cops like fast food Arby’s is also in jeopardy of losing a large percentage of their customers.

“All Cops Eat Free for a Day” would be a simple campaign Arby’s could start to earn back the trust of the public. A simple statement will not cut it. A call to the police chief is not sufficient. This story has legs, and right now it’s outrunning the Arby’s brand in every possible way.

How quickly things change after a honeymoon period. I was in love with a, no, the man during my freshman year of college in 2008, and I didn’t even follow politics or listen to NPR news. I’ll admit, he knew his target audience which is key to any successful PR campaign. It wasn’t just a political campaign, but a well-calculated, strategic communications plan to win over an impressionable, young and naive demographic.

Obama used, and still uses social media to relate to me and my fellow Gen Y peeps! Social media! Ask any republican in 2008 what social media was and they’d tell you it’s literally socializing with members of the media (media and Fox News are synonymous in this case). In 2008, we had no clue who this striking, young, questionably American man was but one thing was certain. He was not George W. Bush. I liked the idea of Obama more than his actual plan to turn our nation around. Blinded I was by that damn word. Change. Haven’t seen anything from himin a while (Barack is change in this case. Personification is nifty. Nifty is a fun word. I’ll stop).

As a PR man, Barack’s 2008 campaign is a case study that will be talked about for years to come. A brilliantly executed digital plan, Facebook swag is on full attack and Obama is suddenly cooler than Maroon 5 when they were still together. Still together? I choose not to believe. So the campaign is a success, Obama wins and reality hits. The voter high wears off, and what’s next? He’s still the only one smoking, blowing smoke right in our faces because his team successfully used every great PR tactic in the book to influence our ideas, attitudes and beliefs.

Every brand should strive to do the same, but please deliver on your word so you have more to show for your efforts than a busted healthcare launch and the cutest Portuguese Water Dog I’ve ever laid eyes on.

A company’s online reputation is crucial toward building goodwill, trust and loyalty among its customers, but this week one particular restaurant discovered how easy it is to tarnish a brand identity overnight.

Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro took it to a whole new level of crazy earlier this week, and the web had the pleasure of following this embarrassing social media meltdown since it first erupted Monday night. To provide a bit of background, the restaurant is located in Scotsdale, Arizona, and it was recently featured on an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

The two owners, Samy and Amy Bouzaglo, are a dysfunctional duo to say the least. Ramsay tried to salvage this lost cause of an establishment, but even he wasn’t able to tame these two crazies. The episode of Kitchen Nightmares aired in Dec. 2012, and now five months later they’ve made national headlines spurring from multiple social media blunders on social media sites Facebook, Reddit and Yelp.

Online users flooded these sites with negative comments about the restaurant’s unstable owners, sub-par food and questionable business practices, prompting Samy and Amy to respond to the “reddits”, “sinners” and “haters” who were only fueling the fire at this point. It got ugly when the two started sending out threatening Facebook posts with expletives littered throughout. This laughable excuse for a business was trolled hard by the relentless online masses, and the bakery owners did every single thing you should never do when executing an effective social media strategy.

In fact, Forbes compiled a list of six key things you should never do on social media in light of this recent act of social media suicide. If we can take away any piece of advice from this story, I think it would be to never. go. full. retard.